The extra mile / At 61, Larkspur woman discovers life in...

1of2Shirley Matson didn't take up running until she was in her late 30's-early 40's, and now at age 61, she holds about every middle- to long-distance running record for women in age groups 50 and up. Photo of her on the track at the College of Marin.
Photo by Craig Lee/San Francisco ChroniclePhoto: CRAIG LEE

2of2Shirley Matson didn't take up running until she was in her late 30's-early 40's, and now at age 61, she holds about every middle- to long-distance running record for women in age groups 50 and up. Photo of Shirley Matson (right) running alongside Elmo Shropshire. (side note, Elmo Shropshire happens to be the guy who wrote and played the hit song "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" a hit cult song classic.)
Photo by Craig Lee/San Francisco ChroniclePhoto: CRAIG LEE

She took her sweet time about it, but ever since Shirley Matson started running she's been nearly unstoppable - and unbeatable.

Owner of just about every national female age-division record from the mile to the marathon for the post-40 set, Matson, a 61-year-old Larkspur resident who -didn't put on a pair of running shoes until she was almost 37, is still going strong.

"I'm in the sport because I want to do it," says Matson, who just last September set the world mile record (5 minutes, 58.69 seconds) for women over 60 years old. "If I'm running, I'm happy."

And if she's racing, she's more than likely setting some standard or other: She's had 288 age-group victories since turning 40 in 1981, has held or holds more than 30 age-division track and road-race records, has been her age group runner of the year 11 times since 1984, has been the only woman to win the brutal Dipsea race three times ('93, '00 and '01) and was inducted into USA Track and Field's Masters Hall of Fame in 1998.

And Matson -didn't even have to break a sweat when she became the first woman to be admitted into the Olympic Club in 1992, breaking a 132-year-old all-male tradition for the San Francisco athletic organization.

"She is arguably the most honored age division runner in the last 10 years, " says running guru Barry Spitz of San Anselmo. "She has more national age records than anyone . . . Relatively speaking, Shirley could be the No. 1 racer (of any age) in the country. . . . She's big time."

Despite the records and the recognition, the plaudits and the praise, Matson insists she is nothing out of the ordinary.

"I -don't consider myself a fluke or a freak," she says. "I -don't consider myself special . . . I'm just a human being who has had some success. . . . All it took was a lot of hard work."

And a lot of determination.

"I'm always working as hard as I can," she says. "It's a personal thing: I want to be the best I can be. . . . I race to see what I can do."

You -wouldn't know it by looking at the 5-foot-1, 105-pound retired home economist/nutrition consultant. She seems to be the epitome of somebody's sweet aunt, selling Tamalpa Club T-shirts before races and volunteering for a myriad of club jobs. But once the starting gun goes off, so does the Little Old Lady veneer.

"I've put pressure on myself to always perform at a certain level," she says.

First run

That never-say-die approach cropped up in her first race, a 5-kilometer run around Oakland's Lake Merritt in 1977. Matson, who was a "recreational athlete,

just the occasional skiing and biking trips" until a boyfriend got her to start running in the mid-'70s, entered the women-only event with some trepidation.

"I showed up and saw 200 women standing around and then I saw this narrow little trail and thought, 'My gosh, I'm going to get trampled here,' " she says.

So in typical Matson form, she took off "like a jackrabbit" and grabbed the lead. "After 100 yards I started to die and gasp and thought, 'Here they come now; I'm going to get trampled,' " she says. "But they -didn't catch me."

Matson ran off the front until about halfway into the 3.1-mile race, when another woman caught up to her.

Although Matson's kick -wasn't enough to overtake the other runner, she did finish second with a very respectable time of 19:27. "It was good, but I - didn't know how good because I -didn't know anything about (race) times," says Matson, whose best clocking ever in the 5-kilometer road distance (17:27) came in '91, when she was 50.

The very next day, Matson went out to run her first 10-kilometer race, an event that went from Fort Baker in Marin, over the Golden Gate Bridge to the Marina. She again finished second among the women after losing in a sprint to the winner. She finished in 41:29, a clocking she would gradually improve on until she hit her personal best of 35:32 some eight years later.

"I was 36-and-a-half and having a wonderful time."

Although Matson entered races off-and-on for the next several years, she really -didn't hit her stride until she turned 40, the first year she could compete in the Masters category.

"In 1981 I just mentally clicked over," says Matson, who was living in San Diego at the time. "My times were close to what other 40-year-olds were running. So I thought if I put more energy into it, I could be one of those award winners."

Setting records

With the assistance of fellow runner Dan McCaskill, who, Matson says, provided "good tips on the way to approach running and racing and attitude," she soon set her first age-group record, running 1:20:47 for a half-marathon (13.1 miles) in 1982.

And she's never looked back.

"Practically every race I ran in was a single-age record," Matson says, "(because) every time you turn another age, you have to run another race at every distance, right?"

Although she's had her share of injuries along the way - plantar fasciitis, sciatica, patella tendinitis and a pubic bone problem that sidelined her in 1994 and '95 - she's kept on plugging away. About the only thing that's slowing her down is the more relentless march of time.

"Everyone is aging, getting wrinkles, having aches and pains and other complaints," she says. "It happens to all of us. We are not alone; we have company joining us in this journey.

"And as long as I am deriving pleasure from running, I'll be out there."